San Diego Objectivist Study Group

In many recent polls that try to read the changing attitudes of American voters, particularly those concerning the rising Tea Party movement, I notice the use of the term “independents” in poll results. It would be very interesting to find out who these “independents” are.

Conventionally, it is taken for granted in opinion polls that the term “independents” refers to voters who are unaffiliated with either major political parties. This is a legitimate catch-all category. In the sense of party affiliation, “independents” generically contrasts against the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

The term “independents,” though convenient and legitimate in meaning it may be, is still uninformative in describing who these voters are, what they value, and why they favor the Tea Party movement. It does not help explain why both political parties vie for their membership, or why the Republican Party wants especially to co-opt the Tea Party movement itself.

Going beyond merely designating party affiliation, I suggest using a different term in future polls and dialogs to find out more about who these voters are culturally. I suggest “individualists” as a term designating cultural affiliation to contrast against all forms of “collectivists” of both the cultural right and the cultural left.

Individualism, the ethical and cultural worldview that a man lives by his own mind and for his own sake, is a legitimate but little-discussed position. The opposite of individualism is collectivism, that man ought to live for something higher than himself. Notice that the former stresses an independence of mind while the latter stresses a ceding of rational independence. Most informatively, notice too that the latter covers the entire cultural spectrum of right and left:

On the cultural right, conservatism holds that God’s authority or religious tradition is the ultimate grounding of moral values, by virtue of which man ought to live his life; and communitarians, on the far right, hold in addition that the community is obliged to socialize men’s morality. On the cultural left, liberalism holds that the state/government is the ultimate arbiter of values (of whichever values, depending on whichever interest groups are in power); and progressives, on the far left, hold in addition that the state must be active in changing society culturally toward the ideal value of equality.

What proportion of the independent voters is individualistic morally and culturally? What proportion of those who favor the Tea Party movement is actually conservative? These questions are much more interesting to discover, don’t you think?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Objectivist Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.